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An Unusual Self-Care Tool Has Taken the Internet by Storm

By Chris Lyford - Some are speculating that ASMR, a soothing physical and emotional experience that 20 to 40 percent of people claim to have, triggered by particular sounds and images, may have therapeutic usefulness. But with the bulk of ASMR videos being created by non-therapists, it's also stirring up controversy.

The Power of Embracing Our Vulnerability

By Mary Sykes Wylie - A pervasive sense of shame makes many of us feel unworthy of human connection. Why the shame? Because in this perfectionistic culture, most of us believe we’re “not good enough: not thin enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, promoted enough” to be worthy of love. But research by professor and acclaimed TED speaker Brené Brown shows that some people have escaped the shame trap. How? They let themselves be vulnerable.

The Digital World is Having a Serious Impact on Our Relationships and Our Brains

By Diane Ackerman - Despite all the seeming connectedness, we’re not the most socially connected we’ve ever been. Generation by generation, our brains have been evolving new networks, new ways of wiring and firing, favoring some behaviors and discarding others, as we train ourselves to meet the challenges of a world we keep amplifying, editing, deconstructing, and recreating.

Five More Clinicians Give Their Take

By Chris Lyford - Our last Clinician’s Quandary received an overwhelming number of responses. Here are a few more that didn’t make it into Part One but offer other useful perspectives on addressing this tricky clinical scenario.

Five Clinicians Give Their Take on This Tricky Clinical Scenario

By Chris Lyford - Jonathan is in his 30s and struggles with intimacy, which is why he came to therapy. Sometimes during sessions, he checks his phone for emails or updates, even though his therapist has asked him not to. She suspects Jonathan's phone use may be affecting his “real life” relationships, but he insists it’s not a problem. Here's how five therapists say they'd tackle the situation.

A World Where Life is Always Elsewhere

By Fred Wistow - Every day, every moment, we must wade through the flood of incoming alerts and emails urgently demanding our time and attention, all the while knowing that there’s an infinite ocean of stuff online that waits for us at all hours to stick our toe in so that it may then slowly begin to swallow us up . . . until we drown.

Understanding Gender-Variant Clients

Margaret Nichols • 1 Comment

By Margaret Nichols - As cultural attitudes about gender variance have undergone a profound shift, much of what therapists believed about what it means to be transgender is now hopelessly outdated. But how do people know that they’re the wrong gender? And what does that kind of knowing mean for our assumptions about males and females as “opposite sexes”?

Can Pornography Actually Help our Relationships?

Porn is polarizing. Porn is confusing. Porn can be alarming. For therapists, porn can push us out of our comfort zone and trigger negative countertransference. One thing is for sure: porn is everywhere, and it’s here to stay. So what do therapists have to say about it?

Human beings are creatures of habit, and nowhere is the force of habit more apparent than in the way most of us use the Internet. Few of us are disciplined enough to go online, do one thing, and log off, and researchers are beginning to document the emotional and psychological price we're paying for doing so. But the good news is that feeling overwhelmed and lost online isn't an inevitable consequence of living in the Internet Age---using a few mindfulness techniques, we can change how we behave when we go on online and how we interact with the web.